Staff Platform Engineer

clarify; United States; Hybrid; USD 185,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Stock options

401(k) match

Flexible time off

Parental leave

Offsites

Job summary

Clarify is building an AI-native CRM and is seeking a Staff Platform Engineer to own the data platform, ingestion pipelines and public APIs. You’ll set technical direction, ensure data quality and reliability as the product scales.

You’ll work with founders and squads, build real-time eventing, design canonical data models, and ship with observability, mentoring, and pragmatic standards. Fully distributed with some on-site in Seattle.

Qualifications

• Experience at Staff level or above owning end-to-end data/platform architecture.
• Experience with data platforms, ingestion pipelines, or event-driven systems at scale.
• Strong in TypeScript and Node.js; deep PostgreSQL knowledge.
• Experience with queues/event streams (BullMQ, Kafka) and API design.
• Own production deployments, on-call responsibilities.
• Startup experience and customer impact mindset.
• Bonus: experience with data/integration platforms and public developer APIs.
• Bonus: entity resolution or data-quality work.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture of the data platform and set its technical direction as we scale.
• Build ingestion pipelines for email, calendar, calls and third-party data.
• Evolve our eventing system for real-time reactions to changes in product features and Signals.
• Design canonical data model and integration framework for HubSpot, Salesforce and Stripe.
• Shape our public APIs and webhooks for customers and partners to build on Clarify.
• Solve rate limits, backfills, ordering, idempotency, conflicts and dedup.
• Build observability to catch data issues before customers.
• Mentor engineers and raise the bar through design reviews and pragmatic standards.
• Use AI to accelerate modeling, testing and review.

Skills

TypeScript

Node.js

APIs design

On-call ownership

Tools

Postgres

BullMQ

Kafka

Job description

About Clarify

Clarify is building the AI-native CRM - a platform designed from the ground up for how modern go-to-market teams actually work. We raised $22.5M and assembled a team of ~27 people who believe the CRM category is overdue for a complete rethink: less manual data entry, smarter automation, and AI that actually understands your pipeline.We're early and moving fast. The foundational decisions you make here will shape how the product scales.

About the Role

A CRM is only as good as the data in it. Everything Clarify does - our AI Rep, reporting, Signals - runs on a platform that ingests, models and reacts to a constant stream of customer data: email, calendar, calls, product usage and records from tools like HubSpot, Salesforce and Stripe. That platform is where customer trust is won or lost, and it's where we're adding senior strength right now.As a Staff Platform Engineer, you'll own the foundations the rest of the product is built on: our data platform, ingestion pipelines, eventing system, integrations and public APIs. You'll set the technical direction for how data enters Clarify, how it's modeled and kept clean, and how the product and our customers build on top of it. You'll work closely with the founders and product squads, and you'll own the reliability of what you build in production.

What you'll do

• Own the architecture of Clarify's data platform and set its technical direction as we scale
• Build ingestion pipelines that bring in email, calendar, calls and third-party data reliably and at volume
• Evolve our eventing system so product features, AI agents and Signals can react to changes in real time
• Design the canonical data model and integration framework that lets systems like HubSpot, Salesforce and Stripe map cleanly into Clarify
• Shape our public APIs and webhooks so customers and partners can build on Clarify
• Solve the hard parts: rate limits, backfills, ordering, idempotency, conflict resolution and dedup
• Build observability so we catch data issues before customers do
• Raise the bar for the engineering team through design reviews, mentoring and pragmatic standards
• Use AI in your workflow to move faster on modeling, testing and review

Your background

• You've operated at a Staff level or above, owning the architecture of a data or platform system end-to-end
• You've built and run data platforms, ingestion pipelines or event-driven systems in production at scale
• Strong with TypeScript and Node.js; deep with Postgres
• You've built on queues and event streams (BullMQ, Kafka or similar)
• You've designed APIs and pipelines that handle conflicts, retries and partial failures gracefully
• You've built and operated integrations with third-party APIs
• You own what you ship in production, including on-call
• You've worked at a startup and like being close to customer impact
• Bonus: You've worked at a data or integration platform (Segment, Fivetran, Hightouch, Census, Merge, Paragon)
• Bonus: You've designed public developer APIs
• Bonus: Entity resolution or data-quality work

Our stack: TypeScript, React/Next.js, Node.js; Postgres, Kafka, BullMQ.

Compensation and Benefits

We offer a salary range of $185,000-$230,000 depending on level and location, benchmarked against market data for startups our size, plus competitive stock options with standard 4-year vesting and a 1-year cliff. Benefits include fully covered medical, dental, and vision for you (50% for dependents), a 401(k) with company match, flexible time off, and generous parental leave. We bring the full team together 2-3 times a year for offsites.

Our Seattle-based employees work from our Pioneer Square office three days a week. Outside of Seattle, we're a fully distributed team.

Clarify is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. We are committed to building an inclusive team and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.